← Personal Injury Mastermind w/ Chris Dreyer
Personal Injury Mastermind w/ Chris Dreyer
398. The Titanic Trap: How to Scale and Steer a Massive Firm w/ David Chamberlin
00:26:17
Scaling to 300 Employees While Staying Nimble
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- [00:02]
A
The law offices of James Scott Farron is a massive vessel. VP of marketing and operations David Chamberlain helped steer a ship that has represented over 73,000 clients and fields a team of nearly 300.
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B
Even though we're 300 plus, we still want to work like we've only got like 25 employees so that we can make changes quickly when we need to.
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A
But that level of scale usually brings a crushing amount of bureaucracy. Leadership cannot simply point where they want to go and expect the ship to turn on a dime. Every time they try to turn the wheel, it's a fight.
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B
When you got, you know, nearly 300 employees like we do, it's a lot more challenging when you want to launch a new initiative or make a change because there's a lot more communication that goes into it.
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A
As your team grows, how do you avoid becoming the Titanic? Big, powerful, but nearly impossible to turn?
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B
There's a lot more. Getting people to understand the why and then just getting the change to actually happen. It's just like any business dealing with a lot of employees. You got to be real careful, try to not get trapped into any kind of bureaucracy.
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A
The answer isn't a bigger rudder. It's a better engine room. This is Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings IO, the elite performance marketing agency for personal injury law firms. In today's episode, David Chamberlain reveals how he redesigned his internal workflows to ensure that adding weight doesn't mean losing speed. Let's kick it off with a win. So off the top of the dome, what's something you're excited about now? Something the firm's involved in?
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B
We're launching a couple big initiatives this year that I'm really excited about that are really focused on enhancing the client experience. I think it's going to be transformative for us and just really excited about what that's going to look like, you know, five years from now.
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A
So can I dig into this a little bit? I. I went down this rabbit hole. On the agency side for client service, you have an account manager, your main point of contact, but then typically who talks to delivery is the project manager. And on the firm side, if I'm kind of trying to equate those in the same manner, I guess would the project manager be the case manager?
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B
Yeah. So our paralegals are going to be the primary contact for our clients. Obviously the attorneys are heavily involved, but the day to day contact is really the paralegals getting with the clients. Yep.
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A
I guess the reason why I asked and, and I'm look, you guys have thousands of Google reviews and an amazing, you know, very high rating. So you guys are taking this very serious. You know, I guess in the legal space I don't see like that account manager, like client service only role. You know, the paralegals are doing it. Do you see like a distinction, like a separation or how do you think about that?
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B
We have somebody that serves kind of in a client service role to ensure that, that they handle any issues that may get elevated to them. So we do have that. It's not many thankfully, but you know, again that the paralegal is the one that has the primary relationship with the client and you know, they're really in charge of, you know, keeping the client informed, letting them know what's going on with their case and hope and you know, also just providing the excellent service that we do.
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A
Thanks for that. I mean, you know better than anyone that how important the reviews are to the LLMs, to the LSA, to the maps. And so I think that's super smart that you guys are taking it to that top, top 1%, however you want to say it. How do you think about building a marketing plan where you're going to deploy capital in terms of distribution? Like how do you think about that for your firm?
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B
Well, I mean, you know, we think about it all the time. Marketing has changed dramatically from when I first started. TV's still an important part of our mix, but it's certainly changed a lot. You know, it used to be just broadcast tv. Now it's really fragmented with streaming and over the top advertising. OTT very fragmented. You know, obviously LSA wasn't around 15 years ago. That has become a critical part of our mix. So just paid digital is much more important than it ever has been to us. So trying to find that right balance between TV and paid digital is really where we focus and trying to find and you know, we do outdoor advertising as well, billboards, which is a decent part of our mix, you know, but trying to get that right mix between paid digital and TV is where I think we are constantly tweaking. Just like a lot of law firms,
- [04:42]
A
it's so evolving and you know, I think there's a place for it all. I, you know, I think at least from my experience, the firms that I see that struggle is when you think of it like a funnel and maybe that's a little antiquated, but you've got your top of funnel like awareness where you're marketing to everyone like the brand and then you have your let's say just let's eliminate the middle. That's like your reviews, social proof, like your definitely plays a part. But if you go to the bottom, I think of like geo, SEO, lsa, ppc, like, like the capture. I see firms really struggle when they don't do the awareness side. Like they're not doing radio or Facebook ads or over the top.
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B
As you know, it's all name recognition. You know, I mean, so you want to, you want to build that brand so that when people need you and they go and do these searches that they recognize your brand, they recognize your name. And that at least is a first step to hopefully, you know, getting the client to contact you.
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A
And you mentioned lsa, so you said, hey, this is like one of the critically important channels. And to me, you know, there's not a ton of levers, but so you guys are just, you're all in on lsa, you know, as much as you want to share, like how does it compare as a channel to maybe some of the other channels? And, and just in terms of a firm's marketing mix.
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B
So it's a big part of our mix whether we like it or not. You know, Google is the 800 pound gorilla. So it's definitely a big part of our mix. So we are in a unique situation in that we are. North Carolina is a contributory negligence state. So as your listeners will know, basically, if you can be found, if one of our clients can be found to be 1% at fault, it is possible they could be barred from any recovery or one of like I think three or four states in the country that follow that antiquated law. So that makes it very difficult for us. And you know, the value of a typical PI case for us in North Carolina is much smaller than it would be in like California, for example. So we run a volume firm and we have to because of the reduced case values that we have to deal with.
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A
I got one other question on the marketing and the reason I asked is because you guys have done heavy tv, you have the celebrity endorsements, you've done heavy broadcast television, and I believe you even had a big print operation. I'm not sure the legal standings on that right now, but how do you think about social? Like, where does social fit in the mix? You know, we talked to Morris Bart. Morris Bart's like, ah, not a big fan, but where do you think about it?
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B
So we pivoted. I would say really up until a couple years ago, social was a minor part of our mix. We did it just because it's there. But a couple years ago, we made the decision to invest heavily in it and really tackle it. So it is a huge part of our marketing mix now. And the reason why is go where the eyeballs are. I mean, everybody is on social media, so if you're not, you're missing a lot of eyeballs. So we have fully embraced social.
- [07:57]
A
Well said. And then we got to touch on the reviews. So you got over a ousand reviews in four locations now you advertise a ton, so you got a lot of, you know, swings at the plate. But can you provide any guidance or suggestions on like, how a firm listening could go about in capturing reviews and just how you think about the review acquisition and its importance?
- [08:22]
B
So reviews is critical. It is a, it's a, it's an important thing that we push constantly in our firm. You know, I'm stating the obvious, but if a client is looking for a law firm and they see a list of options, they're probably going to contact, at least contact one of the ones that has the most reviews with the best rating. So people believe in social proof. We all shop on Amazon, we all buy this stuff with the best rating. Same thing applies to law firms. So it's a major focus for us, has been for years, you know, and I think the advice I would give is make it an important metric in your firm. Make it everybody's responsibility, that's client facing. You might even want to designate a person or team that helps to generate these reviews that are, that don't deal with clients. We have done that. And then, you know, just build it into the culture that it's an expectation that, hey, it's okay to ask for reviews. It's not dirty or scammy or anything like that. I think sometimes a lot of professionals feel like it's too salesy to ask for a review and it's not. It's completely appropriate and it's. Everybody's used to it nowadays.
- [09:32]
A
And I agree. I mean it's, it's also just how discovery is changing. And ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude, one of the first. If you ask practically any variation of a, an input, a prompt and you ask like who's the best lawyer? It almost always will say one of the listings will say they have X amount of reviews or the X rated. So clearly, you know, the LLMs are putting an emphasis on it. We know the impact from LSA and local SEO just from a rankings perspective. Not to mention the conversion social proof aspect that you mentioned. If you run a personal injury Firm better decisions come from better inputs. The Personal Injury Mastermind newsletter tracks what is changing in personal injury law. Regulations, verdicts, AI and how top firms are responding. One email per week, built for owners. Get it at newsletter rankings IO. That's newsletter rankings IO. David just dropped a masterclass on reputation management. But there's always a catch. Reviews drive calls. And if you have a thousand plus five star reviews, the phone is going to ring a lot. That is where many firms crumble. They spend a fortune getting the phone a ring, but they treat intake like a reception desk instead of a sales floor. When you are processing the volume that David is. With over 73,000 clients served, you can't just answer the phone. You have to engineer a system that converts those calls into cases. Let's kick it over to sales. So intake, I mean, I'm going to do some terrible math here. So you had 73,000 cases since 1997. You're looking at, you know, 3,800 cases a year, roughly 10 cases signed per day, something like that. I might be way off. So you're processing a lot of volume. So how has the intake team evolved? We'll talk about growth path too, but talk to me about intake and kind of how, how your firm thinks about it.
- [11:35]
B
Oh, I mean, it's, you know, if you're ranking them in importance, it goes marketing and then intake. Intake is everything. So you got to be able to capture when the client calls, you want to make sure they feel good about the call they just made, that they feel confident, they feel heard, and they feel safe that they've contacted the right law firm. And that's what our intake does. They are phenomenal. It's evolved a lot since when I first started the firm. When I first started, our intake department was like, I don't know, three or four people. Now it's near 20. You know, we don't run a 247 intake like some firms do, but it's pretty close. You know, we have people, we've intake staff that are all over the country to help with that, you know, and it's a hard job, but we have rock stars in our intake department and they're just amazing.
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A
So you have like an escalation if someone wants to talk to an attorney. Do you have like a dedicated intake attorney? That's a big question. That many, you know, hey, how involved should the attorneys be on intake?
- [12:34]
B
Yeah, we have dedicated intake attorneys. They work exclusively in intake for us. We have found that to be a best practice. We certainly have, you know, other Attorneys in the firm will also participate in intake when necessary. But for the most part, we, we have an escalation process where a client calls in and if it meets a certain threshold, they're always going to talk with an intake attorney or if there's just a, you know, something going on with their potential legal need, where we feel they need to speak with an attorney first. So it can depend on case type or case details.
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A
I can imagine that really impacts the conversions too. When somebody's on the fence, they actually got to speak to an attorney as opposed to maybe another firm. They just talk to an intake specialist for sure. Let's talk about the chase, right? Talk to me about, you know, the form comes in and you don't get in touch with the person. You know, are you chasing 30 days? He chasing 14 days. Are you texting? Are you. How do you think about double dials? Do you do double dial? Like talk to me about all that?
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B
Yeah. So that's another area we've played with a lot over the years. You know, right now we're chasing for a couple of weeks. We have found that to be the sweet spot for us. I know other firms will go longer than that. You know, we're pretty aggressive. We utilize, you know, phone, text, email, and have a chase sequence. We try to use the right language and all of those communications to get the person to contact us back. And we've experimented with that a lot over the years. So yeah, we're utilizing all resources and all necessary tactics to get the client to call us back when they seem to have gone mia.
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A
Just another question. On, on like the. Are you guys doing a power dialer? Like comes in, it goes to the next available rep, or is it, are you kind of manually? I mean with staffing, 20 plus, I mean you, you certainly have the, the bodies. Maybe you don't need a power dialer. Like, talk to me about the tech stack and how you think about tech as it relates to intake.
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B
So tech just generally in our firm, you know, we, it's one of our major things that we focus on everywhere. So we are tech adopters. We want to make sure that we have the latest and greatest that makes everything flow better, whether it's better for systems or clients. When a call comes in, it's rolling over, so it's finding the next available person instantly. We have a safety net of a third party answering service. We don't want any calls ever going to the third party answering service. That is, you know, worst case scenario kind of thing because they're always going to convert worse and it's just a worse experience for our potential clients.
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A
I have one other big question on the, on the intake, and this is another one that I, I get. Some people are like, hey, use a script. These are the exact words that you say. And then other people are more on the framework, like, here's your opening. And it, it, it lends itself to a little bit. It gives the intake specialist. It requires more training, of course, but it gives them more flexibility to try to close the call. You know, how do you think about like the, the script versus the framework style on the intake?
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B
Great question. Yeah, we used to be much more scripted than we are now, but we have found now it's best to provide the framework. We want the conversation to flow naturally and if you're too scripted, it can come across that way. We've all been on calls where you contact some business and you can tell they are just scripted because they're like, either they're not answering your question or they say, you know, it's just, it's a bad experience. So we've gone much more on the framework side and really embraced training our staff to do and say the right things.
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A
Fantastic. Fantastic. Definitely much more complicated, but has those advantages. Probably lends itself to more review opportunities too, because they know when they can insert that ask when they're being helpful. Talking about the talent, clearly affirm, as successful as yours has high standards, you're looking for top talent. How do you think about recruiting top talent, keeping top talent, nurturing them, all the above.
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B
Yeah, well, I think we've embraced the Netflix model, I would say, which is, you know, that or Bezos and Amazon, Apple would all say the same thing. A players want to work with A players and that's our goal, is to get A players across the board, you know, and also A players are just going to produce more than, you know, B or C players. So we've embraced that model and, you know, that's our goal from a recruiting standpoint is that, you know, if we come across somebody that we think is going to be an A player, even if we don't have a place for them right then and there, we may still hire them and say, okay, listen, we'll find something for you to do because, you know, we recognize that you can be a major contributor to the firm. And so constantly trying to up our game and up our talent is something we're constantly focused on.
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A
I think that's excellent. Yeah, I read that Netflix book and finished the book and I'm like, oh boy. Because it got me fired up. Like we get in those scenarios where you gotta be maybe a B player hanging around. And by the way, they might have been an A at some point. And then you grow and then your ceiling raises your standards rays. And it's just, I think it's the most challenging part of running a business.
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B
I think it's also, you know, I think managers and leaders just sometimes forget that, you know, when you keep somebody who's not a high performer around, the damage it can do to the rest of a high performing team. I mean, I can't tell you how many times, you know, unfortunately I've had to let somebody go. And then the team's like, what took so long? You know, why'd you do that? And it just wears on them and their morale and it drags them down. And, you know, there's countless studies that come out now a days that show like, you know, how one poor performer can drag the team down 15, 20%, that kind of thing. So, you know, one of the other things we loved from the the Netflix book, I read it as well, was the whole keeper test. If someone's not familiar, the keeper test, Netflix said that you need to routinely evaluate your staff and implement the keeper test, which says if the person came into your office today and said they were quitting, how hard would you fight to keep them? If the answer is you wouldn't fight to keep them, then why are you keeping them now? If the answer is you would fight to keep them, well, then make sure that's an A player and make sure you're keeping them happy and keeping them engaged.
- [19:02]
A
I love that. There's another mental model that I use as it relates to like even vendors and agencies. So I'll kind of, here's one of the things that I do. I'll say if I have an employee that's in house, I'm like, would I pay a vendor? And you think of it like that fixed fee to do this thing if it was a vendor. And sometimes you're like, no, I wouldn't, you know, based upon the output of the employee. And then sometimes you're like, oh, heck yeah, I would pay that.
- [19:26]
B
That's a great idea. I love that. I love that.
- [19:29]
A
David's right. A players want to work with A players. And when you tolerate B players, you're just hurting the bottom line. You're telling your best people that good enough is acceptable. But here's the other side of that coin. You can hire a team of absolute rock stars. But if you put them in a broken system and they fell, and if you don't fix it, they'll leave. David realized to keep 300 employees moving fast, he couldn't just rely on good people. He needed a better process. He didn't look to other law firms for the answer. He looked to the assembly line.
- [19:58]
B
Years ago, we implemented Weaned, if you're familiar with that, the Toyota production system, Lean. So, you know, our goal is to remove unnecessary waste at every step of the process. So kind of going back to the way you look at vendors, we kind of look at the same way. You know, we look at our systems and say, what, a client pay for this? And, you know, some things are necessary, client doesn't want to pay for, you know, following certain regulations, but you have no choice. But there are things in your system where it's probably. It can be unnecessary. And you got to evaluate these things and say, why am I doing this? Or why are we doing it this way? It doesn't make sense anymore.
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A
You opened up can of worms for me, so I'm speaking to the integrator now. So you threw out Lean. And, you know, so Jack Welch is, like, peeking over your shoulder from the grave. Are you putting people, your paralegals through Six Sigma stuff? Like, look, I read the Toyota Production System, the book back in the day. Are you doing, like, these. I believe they have quality circles and like, like, how are you actually approaching the lean methodology of eliminating waste?
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B
So when we first started, nothing was Six Sigma, but when we first rolled out the initiative for well over a year, maybe even more than that, we met with every single department, painstakingly went through every step of the process and questioned everything, and then we refined the processes. That's something we still do on an annual basis. We will go in and review processes and see where we can get more efficient. So we don't have the testing groups at this point in time, but it's become ingrained in the culture where we just want people looking for waste and suggesting, you know, better ways to do things. And we've done. I think we've done a good job of that. It can always be better, of course, but, you know, the ultimate goal is to get your people on the front lines that are suggesting all of these things. And that's where I think we've made some good strides.
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A
I think it's so hard to do. You know, one of the things when you get bigger and. And look, we're not at 300, but we're at about 100 and I think we're about 180 people now is like, the more roles you create, like, it. It just creates more silos. So you're like, hey, I want accounts enablement because it'll enable the. And then it's like, okay, now I just put another, like, kind of layer in there, and it's like, so is that kind of part of this lean, like, eliminating some of the bureaucracy and, like, making them, you know, closer in terms of communication? Are you thinking about it just pure from process expenses, things like that?
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B
Oh, it's both. It's both, yeah. I mean, we don't want unnecessary positions. We also don't want a lot of silos, you know, where it's not necessary or where it hurts the. The systems or the clients. So it's all, you know, we want to achieve continuous flow as best as we can. So that's. That's the goal. Eliminate waste and continuous flow. Right.
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A
Love it. Throughput. David, this has been amazing, you know, for our audience listening that maybe has some questions about what we discussed, or they want to get in touch with you or maybe have a case to refer the firm. You know, what's the best way to get in touch with you?
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B
Oh, yeah, we'd love it. So I. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm so I'm there. You can always just email me as well or call me, but happy to talk and answer any questions and help out where I can.
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A
Amazing. Thanks for coming on the show.
- [23:28]
B
Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.
- [23:30]
A
Scale is often the enemy of speed. Most firms grow until they become the Titanic. Too big to turn, too slow to react to the icebergs ahead. But David proved that with the right engine room, you can have the power of a giant and the agility of a startup. If you're looking to build a massive vessel of your own, you need the right fuel to keep that engine running. That's where we come in. At Rankings IO, we help elite firms dominate the search results and capture the cases that fuel major growth. If you're ready to scale without slowing down, visit us@ Rankings IO. I'm Chris Dreyer. Thanks for listening to Personal Injury Mastermind.